Karla McLaren was a new-age healer and teacher. An author with several books like “Emotional Genius” and “Becoming an Empath”. A self described “full-fledged member of the New Age culture for over thirty years”.

Then, a few years ago, she became a skeptic, and she wrote this wonderful article that explains in part why it took so long.

In a very similar manner we have two cultures in the area of Morgellons. One of rational skepticism, and one of alternative beliefs. What these two culture have is a failure to communicate. Karla gives a heartfelt request that I’m sure many Morgellons sufferers would agree with:

“I would ask you to respect our humanity, and approach us not as if you are reformers or redeemers. I would ask you to approach us as fellow humans who share your concern and interest in the welfare of others. I would ask you to be as culturally intelligent as you are scientifically intelligent, and to work to understand our culture as clearly as you understand the techniques, ideas, and modalities that have sprung from it. We are a people, not a problem“

23 Responses to “Bridging the chasm”

That is a good article. The morgies feel disrespected though, when they aren’t, and that chasm just cannot be bridged.

Morgies twist everything that’s said to them. For example, pose a simple rhetorical question on their message boards, and it is perceived as a personal, direct question, to not only one out of the crowd, but by many. In rapid fire timing, here come the questions, “What makes you think that I…?”

…and off they go, every time.

They feel condemned and go to extremes with being defensive. They just aren’t very nice people, except to each other. That’s par for the course on their message boards, and apparently another pathological manifestation of their illness, and of being in a cult.

They’re completely devoid of so many of the cognitive abilities that we all take for granted.

I truly can’t help but wonder what role late stage lyme disease might just have in this made up myth of morgellons, but I have some suspicions. Morgies have ways of not responding to a polite, direct question, hehe, but they jump like mad on rhetorical ones.

Lyme disease, as we know, if treated early, is a transient illness with mild symptoms and no long-term sequelae. (Most of the morgies’ posts I’ve read, that get diagnosed with lyme, don’t even understand what their numbers mean.) It’s said that in a smaller portion of patients, the course of lyme may be chronic and severe. I just can’t help but think there’s a larger portion. I’ll explain, in a minute.

Case reports have linked a variety of neurologic syndromes to the late stage, including blindness, progressive demyelinating-like syndromes (mimicking Multiple sclerosis or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Guillian-Barre, PROGRESSIVE DEMENTIAS, seizure disorders, strokes, and extrapyramidal disorders.
These motor disorders are associated with pathology that lies outside of the pyramidal tracts, involving the basal ganglia or cerebellum, and I know of at least one female morgie that says she has dystonia.

New clinical manifestations of lyme disease are still being discovered and described. In cases of known lyme disease, it’s said that psychiatrists need to take a comprehensive approach to treatment because so many aspects of the patient’s life…physical, emotional, COGNITIVE, familial, sexual, social and occupational…can be significantly affected by the illness.

(Well, that sure sounds familiar to morgies’ destroyed lives.)

I recall reading once, that there is a significant problem with titer tests when a patient has progressed into the late stage of lyme before seeking diagnosis. They are often the sickest of the lyme disease population, but by the time the test for determination is done, they have low numbers because their antibodies are exhausted by the disease. Doctors can often miss the fact that they have it, and they often don’t receive treatment, when they need it more than others who have high titers. Antibiotics are an ineffective treatment, but, for now, that is the best that can be offered.

It’s such a problematic disease. Some doctors go ahead and treat for it, basing their determination on clinical presentation, but some of them have gotten into trouble and made headlines for that. There’s so much yet to be discovered about it.

Something else that may be of significance (as far as fibers becoming adhered to open sores), is that in late stage lyme disease, there is a skin condition known as acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans, that can involve the formation of sclerotic skin plaques. It’s said to be more common in Europe, though, but there are European morgie people too.

Imagine though, the inadequacies of testing in the late stage, and how many people could be suffering the worst, and remaining untreated, for lyme, as it progresses.

Since the MRF seems to think there is an association to their made up disease being related to lyme disease, could it perhaps be that these patients are in the throes of late stage lyme, which can cause, among other things, PROGRESSIVE DEMENTIAS?

Systemic lupus erythematosis has a definite neuropsychiatric stage as well, and I know some morgie people have that, because I’ve read it in their posts.

With so much uncertainty surrounding the diagnosis and treatment of late stage lyme, it can imitate psychiatric disorders no less than medical ones. Lyme disease is known as the “new great imitator”.

BUT STILL…there is no such thing as morgellons disease, other than a ridiculously heinous cult.

I sympathize with the author, as in my younger and more idealistic years I myself had the very same idea – “why not be a NICE skeptic”? The problem is that it doesn’t work. The new age froo froo movement requires so much ego-coddling (though, ironically, they see this as the very opposite of ego-coddling, and themselves as egoless creatures – I believe Freud has a term for this, but it’s too late at night to go looking it up) that any attempts to communicate with them end up as nothing but a two hour waste of breath. The author’s quote where she said it took three readings before some of her criticisms became apparant is very telling.

Frankly, as caustic as this sounds, I’d just as soon leave the froo froos to die in a sewer of homeopathy, and focus my attentions on those who would be receptive to actual thought. Unfortunately, the internet seems dominated by the froo-froo movement, and without channeling my inner voice through a thick filter of bullshit, I and other people with more than half a mind are quickly banned from virtually any internet forum around.

Project you who want to be, after you find out who you really are. You’re just seeking the wrong forums to try engaging in. When we know who we are, we don’t “filter” anything. Get to know yourself. Be yourself, and let the only “filtering” occur naturally, through people either loving you for who you really are, or to heck with them. We don’t need negative energies in our lives. Be true to yourself.

Shit, smellybits?
how do you produce so much literary goo, with hands as sore as yours?
Where do you get the time?
who pays you?
GUFFAW lmfao rofl
cant you just make a salient point? instead you flood us with your disingenous goo, word after word, day after day.
At least poor ole TC only knows little words and he cant construct/daigram a sentence or an argument, so he is easy to ignore.
but i get a sore finger from scrollin past your bullshit schmooeykins…

coz i dont read it..

can i suggest a bloggers poll?
THE QUESTION IS?

DO YOU ACTUALLY READ SMILYKINS GUFF?
(Michael, can you arrange the poll?)

btw
follow the links dudes at the bottom of the page…..

TC n shcmooeypants are having a field day just obliquely insulting every one who comes here looking for answers.

Hmm. Al, I clicked onto the link you provided within your comment in the topic entitled, More Jamm. Michael hasn’t “selectively highlighted” anything here, and Tall Cotton didn’t even post any comments to this topic. Stop allowing me to insult you, and “everyone”(?) who comes here looking for answers. Michael’ blog is specifically FOR answers to what “morgellons disease” is, so steer clear of the comments’ sections on each page. If you don’t want to do that, you do have a set of eyes that register to your brain the words, “Smileykins” and “Tall Cotton”. Skip past them. I have been wondering about this very thing all along, and how it happens. Anyone who takes the sting of a generalization and goes off on me personally, is asking to be steadily confronted with it until they recognize what they’re doing.

TC n shcmooeypants are having a field day just obliquely insulting every one who comes here looking for answers.

You’re a latecomer here, so you’ve misinterpretted how things went. Michael began this blog in April. There were speculations and accusations that Bugs Alive and Adapted (TC’s & my former names before we left the cult last fall, on our own) had begun this blog, and that we were actually Michael (he went by “Morgellons”, back then). “Seemingly”, some morgies took anything that we said as though we were talking about them, personally. To protect the “cult of their disease”, they came here and went a little nuts on us, to try to shut us up, and thought Michael’ blog could be shut down. Gilllian can share that with you, how Mary Leitao programmned her, as abac68, to do back then.

Whatever occurred as a result of that is what you’re seeing. I constantly told them that this was not the place to air their grievances against TC & me, and to take it to our blog. We hadn’t done anything to any of those people, but when someone leaves a cult, that type of behavior is normal from the current members. Never having dealt with this type of behavior, I stooped to a very low level to try to stop it, with one of them. I’m regretful for succumbing to it, and for the fact that it created such a mess of things for this gentleman, Michael.

Morgies come to this blog to shut it down or shut us up. When they do, all they accomplish is revealing how crazy they really are. I know a lot of Morgies and I’m totally convinced that none of them are playing with a full deck. Some are worse than others, but the ones that think they have it all together are the craziest of all.

Case reports have linked a variety of neurologic syndromes to the late stage, including blindness, progressive demyelinating-like syndromes (mimicking Multiple sclerosis or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Guillian-Barre, PROGRESSIVE DEMENTIAS, seizure disorders, strokes, and extrapyramidal disorders.
These motor disorders are associated with pathology that lies outside of the pyramidal tracts, involving the basal ganglia or cerebellum, and I know of at least one female morgie that says she has dystonia.

You can add me to your dystonia list – Smileykins (of course I read your posts, I like em).

hmmm what else hey – oh yeah dementia is looking good.

Seizures – Ha – just managed to stop one of those this morning. I had a small faint and collapsed to my knees. Tony helped me to the chair and only a couple of limb throws and I was okay.

I can feel the stress in my brain – that much that I can not thing straight, I have a lot of trouble typing posts recently. I like to read of course, I love to learn, but I have trouble retaining the info. I have to re read and let it digest. So if I do miss the point along the way, please let me know.

My dear friend Tony (oh we are friends today, yesterday I hated him!!) He phoned “Lifeline” and talked to a counsellor. Telling her he is worried about his friend (me) who is very sick with (he said Lyme disease/Rickettiosis) and she needs some home help and care, she can not look after herself.

I think he needed to talk to someone. It helped I think. He told the lady that no one would treat an animal the way I have been treated by certain people in the medical profession.

I dream of wonderful things like physiotherapy, occupational therapy, getting my feet done, massage, a personal trainer, meals on wheels!! But it is really hard to qualify for those things when ya 38 yrs of age. Anyway Tony has got some info and a phone number I think so lets see if we can get us both some help.

I believe that my family think that my illness has purely been Chronic Rickettsiosis (Spotted Fever Group) and that should be dead and gone now. My mum I think just believes I am “run down”. Yes she does have an “eye” problem, she can’t see damn reality and how sick I am, she has forgotten what I am meant to look like. I do feel sorry for her because she was told the other day she is at risk of “ocular closure glaucoma”, so she has to keep a check on her symptoms.

It drained the crap out of me listening to it repeated 52 times and then again backwards, but I think I got the message. So I said the right things in the right places. I read a bit about it, and mentioned to her that she should start smoking cannabis because it has been shown to help relieve the ocular pressure in the eyes. Can’t remember her comment really, I just wanted to have a dig, because she “hits the roof” if I smoke cannabis. She knows I have and I do for pain. So does my psychiatrist know this. I had told him how cannabis can help my symptoms, and I also told him when cannabis can hinder my symptoms. He praised me on being able to see the negative/positive side of cannabis use. But at the same time, he will constantly reiterate, it is an illegal substance, and he is not able to discuss using cannabis for my health. He can only tell me the bad things it can do. But besides that, he helped me.

Hi Guys,
I’m so totally confused, I cant even begin to tell of this affliction.
I hope that you can tell me how to rid myself of these fiber, they come out of every orifice, some as long as a horses mane, and as thick.
I have been to several doctors.
What can be done to ease the soreness of the lesions?
I heard that this site has the truth, so I really need to hear how to cure myself.
Also, can you tell me of any legal avenues one can take as I really feel that I have been ignored.
I only heard the term morgellons yesterday, so, I am looking for answers.
A friend in need.

If you’re for real, it sounds to me like you’re hallucinating. I suggest you see a psychiatrist. I tend to think that you may be one of the guys pulling a prank. I say that because I’ve never seen a name spelled that way. Neither do I believe that your report is accurate.

In fact, you sound like you are really Al. But if you aren’t, I apologize. He’s the reason I find the story hard to believe. With him, it’s not the story, but the storyteller. He was asked, over and over, to describe his experience, and he wouldn’t. Nevertheless, I have heard of a couple of other similar reports, and one of them was from someone I trust very much. I don’t know what causes such a thing, but I assure you, it’s not Morgellons Disease. There is no such thing as Morgellons. There never was, and there never will be. See your doctor.

I believe Al wears a rather large badge. I’d been curious to know if he could introspectively determine what he is meaning to project. I know he appears to despise me, but I’ve yet to understand the reason for it.

I remember when my daughter was a little girl and The Smurfs first came on television. I don’t recall his name, but there was one smurf who hated everything. I think that little smurf must have surely had “morgellons disease”.

For the same reason people got to Vegas, it’s a good experience, and they might get something out of it. They would generally save money by staying home though.

Homeopathic doctors are taught to spend a lot of time (often hours) quizzing the patient about their symptoms and their health in general. Patients like that experience as compared to a regular doctor (who often reaches a diagnosis quicker). The homeopathic practitioner may recommend practical treatments, like rest, diet, exercise, bathing practices etc, that might help. The homeopathic remedies do nothing to help the body, but they don’t hurt either, so overall the patient has a reasonable chance of getting better, and they have a nice experience.